March 16, 2025 • 4PM
MOCADA
10 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Featured Readers
Stephanie Wambugu was born in Mombasa, Kenya and she grew up in New England. She lives and works in New York. Her first novel Lonely Crowds will be published by Little, Brown this July.
Irvin Weathersby is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in LitHub, Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He has earned an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College. He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. In Open Contempt is his first book and mediates on art, public space, white supremacy, and social justice in order to create a more equitable future.
Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025) and I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. She also wrote the chapbook Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She was the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. Additionally, she has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, and other notable publications. She is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Clark is at work on a memoir-in-essays, Begging to Be Saved, which explores Black burnout, millennial divorce, faith, art-making, and historical methods of Black survival.
Past Readings:
Tracey Rose Peytonis the author of Night Wherever We Go, which was shortlisted for The Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her short work has appeared in Guernica, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Short Stories 2021. She is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, public art, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing longform essays about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s distinctions include the Climate Narratives Prize, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Yaddo. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor in the Black Studies Department at the City College of New York (CUNY). She lives with her family in the Bronx.
Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is the author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, and an excerpt from which was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is also the author of Ordinary Beast, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. With poet John Murillo, she edited the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters and Poems, for and about One Mr. Komunyakaa. Her honors include the Princeton Arts and Hodder Fellowships from Princeton University, a Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library, a Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, the Poetry International Prize, an Amy Clampitt Residency, and fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University. For bookings please contact Anya Backlund at Blue Flower Arts.
January 19, 2025
Aaron Robertson is a writer, literary translator from Italian, and editor. His debut book, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 2024, a Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of 2024, one of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024, and one of the New York Public Library’s 10 Best Books of 2024. The Black Utopians was also recognized as a best book of the year by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, ELLE, Essence, Literary Hub, and the Chicago Public Library. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, among others, and in 2021, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in translation. Aaron previously served on the board of the American Literary Translators Association and is currently an advisory editor for The Paris Review.
Jeremy Michael Clark is the author of The Trouble with Light, selected by Patricia Smith as a finalist for the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize (University of Arkansas Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Common, Poem-A-Day, The Southern Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. His work has also been anthologized in Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation and Once A City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology. He has received support from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem, the Community of Writers, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. A former editorial assistant at Callaloo, he received his MFA from Rutgers University-Newark and his MSW from the University of Pennsylvania. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he lives in Brooklyn.
Christina Cooke, named a "Writer to Watch" by CBC Books and Shondaland, is the author of Broughtupsy (Catapult; House of Anansi) – selected as a best book of 2024 by Elle and Debutiful as well as recommended reading by The Atlantic, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Cosmopolitan UK, LitHub, Electric Literature, and more. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Epiphany, Apogee, Electric Literature, Split Lip, PRISM International, and elsewhere. A MacDowell fellow and Journey Prize winner, she holds a Master of Arts from the University of New Brunswick, a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has been named the inaugural Poets & Writers Fellow at Vermont Studio Center. Christina was born in Jamaica and is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City.
November 17, 2024
Rio Cortez is the New York Times bestselling author of picture books for children, including The ABCs of Black History, and the forthcoming The River is My Sea and The Blue Velvet Chair. Her debut poetry collection, Golden Ax, was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry and the PEN Open Book Award. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT, she now lives, works, and writes in Harlem, NY.
Kristen Gentry is the author of Mama Said, published by West Virginia University Press. She received her MFA from Indiana University. Her award-winning fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Jabberwock Review, and other journals. She is a VONA and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference alumna who was one of ten debut fiction writers featured in Debutiful and selected by Poets & Writers to participate in their pilot Get the Word Out publicity incubator. She lives and writes in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Naomi Jackson is the author of a novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill (Penguin Press). Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, Jackson's writings have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Camargo Foundation, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Jackson is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark.
October 20, 2023
Featured Readers
India Lena González is a poet, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. Her debut poetry collection, fox woman get out!, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in September 2023 as part of Blessing the Boats Selections. India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. She lives in Harlem.
Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was the recipient of a Chair’s Fellowship and Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, and Plympton’s Writing Downtown Residency. His writing has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, and elsewhere. His short story “Bebo” was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2023, guest edited by Min Jin Lee. He is at work on a story collection titled Locals.
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Her poems have twice appeared in the Best American Poetry series. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Codjoe is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award.
September 15, 2023
Featured Readers
Mayada Ibrahim is a New York-based translator, editor and writer, working in Arabic and English. Her translations have been published by Africa Institute (UAE), Circumference Magazine (US), Archipelago Books (US), Banipal (UK), and Willows House (South Sudan). She participated as a judge in PEN America’s Literary Translation Prize 2022.
Benjamin Wright is bi-racial writer and video editor originally from Oakland, California, and living in Brooklyn, New York. His first novel, OX, is a genre-defying meditation on race, music, family and identity, following the son of a world-famous musician as he grapples with his father’s greatest legacy: a vinyl record with hypnotic, perhaps even supernatural qualities—all set in an America in which the Black population has mysteriously vanished. It will be published by Astra House in 2024.
Kim Coleman Foote was born and raised in New Jersey, where she started writing fiction at the age of seven(ish). A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has received additional fellowships from the NEA, NYFA, Bread Loaf, Phillips Exeter Academy, Center for Fiction, and Fulbright, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook, among others. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, the Missouri Review, The Literary Review, Kweli, and Obsidian. Coleman Hill is her first book.
August 18, 2023
Featured Readers
LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her novella, To the Woman in the Pink Hat, was published in March by Aqueduct Press. Her short fiction, poetry, and journalism have appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, MER, Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more. Her flash story “Offering” was featured in Best Small Fictions 2021 and named Wigleaf’s Top 50. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After and another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by The Manifest-Station, was notable in Best American Essays 2016. She is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar, and is currently working on a speculative short story collection about Black girls and women being mothered, mothering, or wanting to mother. She has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram @latoyajordanwriter.
Mikael Awake is a writer and educator of East African descent based in New York. His writing and teaching revolve around stories of and connections between places and people. He collaborated with underground fashion icon Daniel “Dapper Dan” Day on Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem, a 2019 New York Times bestseller. His fiction has appeared in Callaloo, Witness, and McSweeney's Quarterly, while reported essays and culture writing have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, and New York Magazine. At the moment, he is working on a narrative history of outdoor basketball mecca Rucker Park to be published in North America by Pantheon.
Joselia Rebekah Hughes is a Mad and chronically ill Afro-Caribbean writer, access worker, artist, and educator based in the Bronx. She lives with Sickle Cell Disease. She is a poetry editor at Apogee Journal. Joselia’s work interrogates debility, (de)capacitation, play, experiences of pain, and rhetorics of access. Joselia’s poetry has been nominated for Best of Net and her writing has been published in Apogee Journal, Massachusetts Review, The Poetry Project, Split This Rock, Blackflash Magazine, and elsewhere.
July 21, 2023
Featured Readers
Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana, in 1997. His first book, Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die was selected by Susan Stewart for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and is listed as a best poetry book of 2022 by The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Washington Post. His chapbook Nearness was chosen as the winner of The New Delta Review 2020-21 Chapbook Contest, judged by Brandon Shimoda. Tawanda’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, Lana Turner, Lolwe, The New England Review, The Paris Review, A Public Space and elsewhere.
Tyriek White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, NY. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Literary Foundation, which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop, New York State Writers Institute, and Key West Writers’ Workshop, among other honors. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the novel, WE ARE A HAUNTING (Astra House, 2023).
Fred Moten teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. His latest book is Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (Wave Books, 2023).
June 16, 2023
Featured Readers
Sidik Fofana is a public school teacher in Brooklyn and graduate of NYU’s MFA Creative Writing program. He is a recipient of the 2023 Whiting Award, and was also named an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018. His work has appeared in the Sewanee Review and Granta. He is the author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, published by Scribner in 2022.
Roberto Carlos Garcia is the author of four poetry collections, most recently What Can I Tell You? Selected Poems. His essay collection, Traveling Freely, is forthcoming in 2024 from Northwestern University Press. He is a 2023 NJ State Council of the Arts Fellow. Roberto has been published widely, and he is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing, a literary nonprofit.
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene is a proudly Soweto-made soul, who now makes her home anywhere with sunshine and writing space. An Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum, Magogodi is a Caine Africa Prize, Hedgebrook, MacDowell and Rona Jaffe Award honoree. She leads immersive courses and experiences at Love As A Kind of Cure, a social enterprise she co-founded to dismantle white supremacy. Innards, published May 30, 2023 by W.W.Norton & Company, is her debut story collection. Follow her literary adventures at magogodi.com.
Reading Series Funders:
The Lampblack Reading Series is made possible with support from the Brooklyn Arts Fund (BAF) / Charlene Victor and Ella J. Weiss Cultural Entrepreneur Fund and a Local Arts Support (LAS) grant, both administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.
Brooklyn Arts Fund (BAF) / Charlene Victor and Ella J. Weiss Cultural Entrepreneur Fund is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA).
Local Arts Support (LAS) is sponsored, in part, by the Statewide Community Regrants (SCR) Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
